Through regulating of the gas market, the requirements to be met in terms of managing gas reservoirs for providing gas for seasonal operations are tending increasingly toward “gas on demand”. That means it should be possible for the gas to be called up and made available at any time. Accompanying that is a growing need to automate gas reservoirs such that switchover times between the operating modes “store” and “withdraw” as well as “withdraw with compression” will be minimized. For the required amounts of gas, information about the gas reservoirs must furthermore be available so that in keeping with their levels of availability and respectively current operating modes a judgment can be made about the possible amount of gas that can be stored or withdrawn.
Gas reservoirs currently serve to even out the high demand for gas in winter months by feeding out gas. The amounts of gas conveyed have as a rule hitherto been provided at a day's notice to the gas provider by telephone or e-mail. That means there will nearly always be a negative margin of delay between dispatching the order and processing it because processing the order, for example the ordering of a certain amount of gas, is performed manually. A problem frequently experienced by utility companies is that the available amounts of gas cannot be stored or withdrawn in a timely manner. The activity of gas trading is greatly restricted by conventional communication media such as, for instance, telephone, fax, or e-mail and is often inefficient.